Microsoft Offering Free BES Cloud Hosting – RIM to Follow???

The BES and Exchange relationship has been around for years and Microsoft is hoping to really move in on it with their cloud services. Jim let us know Microsoft has announced on their blog that they have cut the BlackBerry BES fee from $10/month per device to $0/month for their Exchange Online BPOS customers. They will also this solution for their upcoming Office 365 solution that is coming out later this year.

I am not sure how much of a traditional BES this is depending on if it leans closer to BES Premium or BES Express. There is the ability to manage device policies, passwords, settings, and other management features.

The thing is that Microsoft has also gone on to detail how RIM will be following suite with their BES cloud solution which will also be compatible with Microsoft’s cloud Exchange service. They are also saying that RIM’s cloud BES solution is FREE which will be a sweet deal for many companies. RIM could really do regular consumers a solid favor with this by opening this up to 3rd party Exchange hosting services so we can drop the extra $10 these companies charge.